Jagadish Nirmala, Gupta Namita, Agarwal Sumit, Parashar Deepak, Sharma Aditi, Fatima Rukhsar, Topno Amos Prashant, Kumar Vikash, Suri Anil
Cancer Research Program, Cancer Microarray, Genes and Proteins Laboratory, National Institute of Immunology, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi, 110067, India.
Tumour Biol. 2016 Oct;37(10):13101-13110. doi: 10.1007/s13277-016-5240-6. Epub 2016 Jul 23.
Recently, we demonstrated the association of sperm-associated antigen 9 (SPAG9) expression with breast cancer. Among breast cancer, 15 % of the cancers are diagnosed as triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) based on hormone receptor status and represent an important clinical challenge because of lack of effective available targeted therapy. Therefore, in the present investigation, plasmid-based small hairpin (small hairpin RNA (shRNA)) approach was used to ablate SPAG9 in aggressive breast cancer cell line model (MDA-MB-231) in order to understand the role of SPAG9 at molecular level in apoptosis, cell cycle, and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) signaling. Our data in MDA-MB-231 cells showed that ablation of SPAG9 resulted in membrane blebbing, increased mitochondrial membrane potential, DNA fragmentation, phosphatidyl serine surface expression, and caspase activation. SPAG9 depletion also resulted in cell cycle arrest in G0-G1 phase and induced cellular senescence. In addition, in in vitro and in vivo xenograft studies, ablation of SPAG9 resulted in upregulation of p21 along with pro-apoptotic molecules such as BAK, BAX, BIM, BID, NOXA, AIF, Cyto-C, PARP1, APAF1, Caspase 3, and Caspase 9 and epithelial marker, E-cadherin. Also, SPAG9-depleted cells showed downregulation of cyclin B1, cyclin D1, cyclin E, CDK1, CDK4, CDK6, BCL2, Bcl-xL, XIAP, cIAP2, MCL1, GRP78, SLUG, SNAIL, TWIST, vimentin, N-cadherin, MMP2, MMP3, MMP9, SMA, and β-catenin. Collectively, our data suggests that SPAG9 promotes tumor growth by inhibiting apoptosis, altering cell cycle, and enhancing EMT signaling in in vitro cells and in vivo mouse model. Hence, SPAG9 may be a potential novel target for therapeutic use in TNBC treatment.
最近,我们证实了精子相关抗原9(SPAG9)的表达与乳腺癌之间的关联。在乳腺癌中,15%的癌症基于激素受体状态被诊断为三阴性乳腺癌(TNBC),由于缺乏有效的靶向治疗方法,这代表了一项重大的临床挑战。因此,在本研究中,我们采用基于质粒的小发夹RNA(shRNA)方法,在侵袭性乳腺癌细胞系模型(MDA-MB-231)中敲除SPAG9,以了解SPAG9在细胞凋亡、细胞周期和上皮-间质转化(EMT)信号传导的分子水平上所起的作用。我们在MDA-MB-231细胞中的数据表明,敲除SPAG9会导致细胞膜起泡、线粒体膜电位增加、DNA片段化、磷脂酰丝氨酸表面表达以及半胱天冬酶激活。SPAG9的缺失还会导致细胞周期停滞在G0-G1期并诱导细胞衰老。此外,在体外和体内异种移植研究中,敲除SPAG9会导致p21以及促凋亡分子如BAK、BAX、BIM、BID、NOXA、AIF、细胞色素C(Cyto-C)、聚(ADP-核糖)聚合酶1(PARP1)、凋亡蛋白酶激活因子1(APAF1)、半胱天冬酶3和半胱天冬酶9以及上皮标志物E-钙黏蛋白的上调。此外,SPAG9缺失的细胞显示细胞周期蛋白B1、细胞周期蛋白D1、细胞周期蛋白E、细胞周期蛋白依赖性激酶1(CDK1)、CDK4、CDK6、B细胞淋巴瘤-2(BCL2)、Bcl-xL、X连锁凋亡抑制蛋白(XIAP)、细胞凋亡抑制蛋白2(cIAP2)、髓细胞白血病-1(MCL1)、葡萄糖调节蛋白78(GRP78)、锌指蛋白SNAI2(SLUG)、锌指蛋白SNAI1(SNAIL)、TWIST、波形蛋白、N-钙黏蛋白、基质金属蛋白酶2(MMP-2)、MMP-3、MMP-9、平滑肌肌动蛋白(SMA)和β-连环蛋白的下调。总体而言,我们的数据表明,SPAG9通过抑制细胞凋亡、改变细胞周期以及增强体外细胞和体内小鼠模型中的EMT信号传导来促进肿瘤生长。因此,SPAG9可能是TNBC治疗中一种潜在的新型治疗靶点。